A key witness in a federal probe into passport information stolen from the State Department was fatally shot in front of a District church, the Metropolitan Police Department said yesterday.

Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, who had been cooperating with a federal investigators, was found late Thursday night slumped dead inside a car, in front of the Judah House Praise Baptist Church in Northeast, said Cmdr. Michael Anzallo, head of the department's Criminal Investigations Division.

Cmdr. Anzallo said a police officer was patrolling the neighborhood when gunshots were heard, then Lt. Harris was found dead inside the vehicle, which investigators would describe only as a blue car.

Emergency medics pronounced him dead at the scene.

City police said they do not know whether his death was a direct result of his cooperation with federal investigators.

"We don't have any information right now that connects his murder to that case," Cmdr. Anzallo said.

The Washington Times reported April 5 that contractors for the State Department had improperly accessed passport information for presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, which resulted in a series of firings that reached into the agency's top ranks.

One agency employee, who was not identified in documents filed in U.S. District Court, was implicated in a credit-card fraud scheme after Lt. Harris told federal authorities he obtained "passport information from a co-conspirator who works for the U.S. Department of State."

Seems they could have been related, just different parts of the same overall job. Meaning scoping out passports for getting fraudulent CCs for “donations” to the jackal, and getting the jackal’s passport info scrubbed and fixed. Once they had people in the State Dept files to do stuff, they may have had more than one task to do.

I found this shrine in the 2800 block of 12th St NE of Washington, DC. News and police reports stated that Lieutenant Quarles Harris Jr. of Capitol Heights, MD, aged 24, was shot and killed at close range while getting into his car at about 11 PM on Thursday April 17 2008. Police said he was carrying his car keys, a muffin and a bottle of water when he was shot.

Obamas top terrorism and intelligence adviser, John O. Brennan, heads a firm that was cited in March for breaching sensitive files in the State Departments passport office, according to a State Department Inspector Generals report released this past July.

The security breach, first reported by the Washington Times and later confirmed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, involved a contract employee of Brennans firm, The Analysis Corp., which has earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting services to federal agencies and private companies.

During a State Department briefing on March 21, 2008, McCormack confirmed that the contractor had accessed the passport files of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain, and that the inspector general had launched an investigation.

Sources who tracked the investigation tell Newsmax that the main target of the breach was the Obama passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to cauterize the records of potentially embarrassing information.

They looked at the McCain and Clinton files as well to create confusion, one knowledgeable source told Newsmax. But this was basically an attempt to cauterize the Obama file.

At the time of the breach, Brennan was working as an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign.

“This individual’s actions were taken without the knowledge or direction of anyone at The Analysis Corp. and are wholly inconsistent with our professional and ethical standards,” Brennans company said in a statement sent to reporters after the passport breach was made public.

The contact workers opened Obamas and McCains files earlier this year  in Obamas case, as recently as last week. Supervisors were alerted by a computerized alert system that flags unauthorized peeks into high-profile passport files.

A fourth employee casually opened Clintons file last summer during a training session with another worker and was reprimanded, McCormack said.

Passport files include such information as Social Security numbers that could allow sleuths to access credit history and other personal details.

Two workers were from Stanley, Inc., a Virginia company that just signed a five-year, $570 million contract to work on the State Departments passport database, The Associated Press reported. A third worker was contracted from the Analysis Corporation (TAC), which is headed by John O. Brennan, a former CIA agent who advises Obamas campaign on intelligence and foreign policy, the Washington Times reported. The paper also said the State Department was conducting polygraph tests.

The incidents occurred in January, February and March, as Obama burst onto the national scene to become a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, but Obama wasnt informed about it until yesterday, his campaign said. Passport files are supposed to be kept secure under the Privacy Act, and employees are instructed not to read them without authorization.

The fired employees got caught by a computer system that monitors people who dig into files of high-profile individuals.

(snip)

State Department officials said the files probably contained Obama s passport applications, which include information like date of birth, travel plans and Social Security number.

They couldnt say for certain that the fired employees didnt pass the information on.

Obama has a particularly diverse background that makes his file juicy. His father was from Kenya, and as a child, Obama lived in Indonesia - a country subject to travel warnings and terror threats.

He made a 2006 visit to Kenya that attracted national attention at the time, and more recently, when photos surfaced of him in tribal garb.

The two contractors were identified late Friday as the Analysis Corp. of McLean, Va., and Stanley Inc., an Arlington, Va., firm that earlier this week won a five-year, $570 million extension of its contract to perform passport services.

State Department officials said their review showed that Obama’s file was accessed improperly on three occasions.

On Jan. 9, the day after the New Hampshire primary, a Stanley contract employee accessed Obama’s records and was fired within days, officials told the Associated Press. A second worker, employed by Analysis Corp., looked into Obama’s files on Feb. 21, but was not fired. On March 14, another Stanley employee pried into the Democrat's files and was terminated.

It was not immediately clear why employees at the two firms were treated differently. But in a statement issued late Friday, Analysis Corp. said it was honoring the State Department's request to delay firing its consultant in order to give investigators time to conduct their probe.

Man Fatally Shot in Northeast Had Been Charged in Fraud Case
Passport Information Was Used to Obtain Bogus Credit Cards

EXCERPT

The affidavit said that Harris was questioned by the Secret Service, State Department, Postal Service and D.C. police. Despite the prosecutor’s objections, Harris was released the next day on personal recognizance and faced a court hearing in June.

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